When Gnuastro is installed, the configuration files that are shipped with the distribution are copied into the (possibly system wide) prefix/etc/gnuastro directory. For more details on prefix, see Installation directory (by default it is: /usr/local). This directory is the final place (with the lowest priority) that the programs in Gnuastro will check to retrieve parameter values.
If you remove an option and its value from the system wide configuration files, you either have to specify it in more immediate configuration files or set it each time in the command-line. Recall that none of the programs in Gnuastro keep any internal default values and will abort if they do not find a value for the necessary parameters (except the number of threads and output file name). So even though you might never expect to use an optional option, it safe to have it available in this system-wide configuration file even if you do not intend to use it frequently.
Note that in case you install Gnuastro from your distribution’s repositories, prefix will either be set to / (the root directory) or /usr, so you can find the system wide configuration variables in /etc/gnuastro/ or /usr/etc/gnuastro/. The prefix of /usr/local/ is conventionally used for programs you install from source by yourself as in Quick start.
GNU Astronomy Utilities 0.23 manual, July 2024.